Source foods high in nutrients and low in toxins. Chronic conditions: obesity, diabetes, tooth decay, gum disease, heart disease, indigestion, osteoporosis.

— CHALLENGES

Pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and food preservatives are assumed safe when they're not. Commercial foods and agricultural soils are nutrient deficient. Farm subsidies fund industrial agriculture and mega food corporations that value profit over health. Pasteurized dairy contaminated with antibiotic-resistant heat-resistant bacteria. Too much sugary carbs and meat and not enough good fats and vegetables in the modern diet. School contracts with the commercial food industry serve nutrient-depleted meals to children.

— PREVENTION

Invest in organic independent farmers you trust. Source strictly organic whole foods—it's the only way to avoid toxins in the industrial food supply chain. Take control of your food and cook in your own kitchen. Avoid sugar and carbs. Play it safe and eliminate pasteurized dairy and commercial grains, especially wheat and corn. These are the most common food allergens for a reason. Eat your veggies; vegetarians live longer.

— OVERVIEW

Eat organic whole foods free of pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, chemical additives and industrial processing.

Eating smart is one of the most important choices you will make for your health. The concept is simple enough—from the foods available, source the ones with the highest nutrients and the lowest toxins and poisons. The principle is to eat foods that don’t require more energy to digest, metabolize and eliminate than the energy they yield.

Our ancestors have been eating smart for millennia. In nature, animals eat foods low in nutrients and high in poisons only if they're starving and desperate, because over time, toxins will accumulate until the animal is poisoned.

So why do so many humans eat dumb instead of eat smart, especially "well fed" Americans who sport the highest chronic disease rates in the world? Did people really forget what eating is all about?

Maybe they were confused by advertising. Maybe the desire to be fed short-circuited our ability to feed ourselves. At the end of the day, if you want to live healthy, you have to eat smart—more so today than any time in our history because of environmental toxins that we have created and dispersed everywhere.

When we eat smart, we feed ourselves foods that nourish us without poisoning us. We become conscious about what we're putting in our mouths. We avoid inflammatory foods like pasteurized dairy and GMO wheat, soy and corn doused in herbicide. We say no to pesticides and dead processed phoods.

And we say goodbye to refined sugar forever. Sugar is acidic, feeds fungus, and provides zero nutrients. That makes it a dumb food for humans.

If you want healthy cell metabolism, you need a complex array of nutrients that transmit sunlight energy in a form you can metabolize. We depend on plants to photosynthesize sunlight into chemical energy that can be used as fuel. Even if you're an omnivore, you rely on the plants the animal ate to source sunlight as chemical fuel. Once you accept that reality, you'll understand why eating fresh whole foods that are unprocessed and can't sit on a grocery store shelf for months will always yield more vital life-giving energy and better health. Living foods yield more energy. And fermented foods provide good probiotics and enzymes.

Given the challenges of industrial processed foods, you'll need to take control of your mindbody health by cooking organic whole foods in your own kitchen. Source from organic farmers you trust. Eat your veggies. And get enough good fats for cardiovascular and hormonal health. Low fat diets are actually horrible for your health. Avoid processed foods, and foods laden with pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, antibiotics, synthetic hormones, chemical additives, dyes, and denatured trans-fats. Eat a variety of fresh foods of various colors to get a rich source of vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients.

— 03

Eat Smart

— CHALLENGES

— PREVENTION

— OVERVIEW

Eat organic whole foods free of pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, chemical additives and industrial processing.

— FURTHER READING